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Write about a brief but scary encounter with one of your professors.

i should have just found a bush instead of going to the actual latrine. i didn’t even have to shit or anything like that, so it wouldn’t have been bad at all. but i was still young and trying to behave and all that, wanting to not upset anyone by making noise or possibly waking them up when i crunched past their tent in the frigid autumn night, or my piss hit the leaves. so the latrine seemed all right to me. my abdominal pain was urging me to hurry as best i could, and after sloppily shoving on my hiking boots, I moved gingerly through the forest surrounding me. the outhouse was perhaps a hundred or so yards away; with each step, my abdominal pains loomed. my breaths flashed with steam into the bitter cold night.

my flashlight helped me navigate through the maze of trees and pup tents. the sodium light of the outhouse was still too far away to make much of a difference, other than help me find my direction in the dark. the leaves beneath my feet soon gave way to crunching, gritting gravel. with that sound, i knew i was nearing relief. the pain to pee flashed deeper in my groin with every step, and i bit my lip to distract myself from the obvious discomfort.

perhaps it was the chill of the night air on my fatigued, numbing hands that did it. or perhaps it was my being so distracted by my biological urges to excrete. either way, the outcome was undeniable. the flashlight dropped from my hands and rattled to the gravel below. i mouthed a quick “Oh!” and silenced myself just as quickly for fear of waking the other sleeping campers. of course, the light went out as well. still over 50 yards from the outhouse, i squinted, trying to focus all the errant orange light from the distance i could muster. i most likely kicked it away before I grabbed it, but i finally did grasp the light, my only light in the world.

upon flicking the switch a few times, i was still left in the dark. the worst was upon me: no light, no clear path between my destination and myself, and unable to pee without risking pissing all over my boots.

i rattled the flashlight a few times, with no luck. a tap or two against my palm resulted in nothing. screwing up my mouth, i began the painstaking work of re-adjusting the head of the flashlight, with the hopes i could realign the battery with the circuit connectors. i had dropped to my knees to concentrate on using my numbed hands to do the required work.

it was then i heard the footsteps. someone else’s feet were crunching the gravel near me. perhaps a ten-yard span or little more.

my over-active imagination immediately took the best of me. careening through my synapses at breakneck speed were all those scenes i’d seen from all the b-horror films i’d watched while my parents slept and i had stayed awake all too late. fortunately, at that moment, my bladder seemed to cease it’s pangs and urgency. i completely forgot i needed to piss.

the person was walking closer, and i seemed to be nowhere near putting the flashlight together. i’m sure my eyes were the size of moons; in a fit of desperation, i took the head of the flashlight, and jammed it onto the body. a gasp of amazement escaped my lips, as i marveled at the rosy pink glow that now showed itself through the flesh of my fingers. the light had turned back on.

the footsteps had stopped.

clamping my mouth shut, i immediately trained the light in the direction i last heard the footsteps. i breached my fingers across the business end of the flashlight, so that there might be some light shining through unobstructed.

scarcely ten feet away, the man loomed. an emerald green, puffy vest surrounded his torso, which was crammed inside a mustard-yellow flannel shirt with chocolate-brown gridded stripes. thick, translucent amber glasses frames spread across the face, and the odd pinkish light glinted back at me from the lenses. atop it all, a wild, wavy shock of red hair, barely combed, lay spreadeagle.

“mr. richardson!” i exclaimed.

there was a moment of stillness and silence. had the words registered?

the man raised a hand to his breast; casually held between his thumb and forefingers was the handle to a shellacked tin cup.

the man smiled his toothy, tea-stained smile. “what are you doin’ out here tonight?” he asked.

“i have to—i have to go to the bathroom.” the words toppled from my mouth like dried chunks of stool: heavy, and with much effort.

“don’t let me keep you,” replied the language arts professor.

fluids and pressure poured into my bowels instantly.

///

this is not a true story.

i’d just watched a bunch of short videos and listened to audio recordings about paranormal happenings at eastern state penitentiary and civil war battlefields. i’ll be taking a date out there sometime soon.

Below are three sets of words. Use all the words in each set to write mini stories in 300 words or less:

SET 1: paper clips, principal, lunchbox, swing, girl with a pink ribbon

SET 2: biology, class card, foreign student, leaf, blood sample

SET 3: typewriter, filing cabinet, puncher, clerk, carbon paper, janitor

STORY 1:

Clenching a fistful of paper clips so tightly his knuckles were white, the principal gazed longingly through his office window at his obsession. Against all insistence from his therapist, the principal lusted for the little girl with a pink ribbon in her hair. He wanted her; he wanted to touch her unspoiled “lunchbox,” as he and the other molesters mischievously called them.

Seated on the swing, the young girl’s alabaster legs swung in a delightful little arc into the air, exposing her thighs. The paper clips stung like a nest of angry hornets in his clammy hand. Still, he smiled.

STORY 2:

Ever since that fateful day in the first week of school, Eduard–the unfortunate foreign student– knew that biology was not the field of study to which he was destined to excel.

Perhaps it was the blood sample from Tuesday’s session. No, thought Eduard. Of course not. He had been able to withstand seeing his own blood spilled plenty. He loved to pick at his own scabs until he was bleeding again; only then would he feel he had accomplished something worthwhile. His mother jokingly mused that he must deliberately be falling off his bicycle into the thorn bushes along Holloway Creek. If only she knew the truth, she might not be so amused.

While his mother applied generous gobs of antibiotic ointment to his various miniature wounds, Eduard would leaf through his notebook absently until he found his class card. There it was. Her name. His mind spun back instantly to day one at Atwood Hills Elementary School, Grade Five.

Good day, class, she announced in that husky, down-to-earth timbre of hers. I’m here to teach you biology for the next year. My name is Miss Anguine.

Even now, the mere thought of the woman’s name caused him to grimace. Eduard absently scratched at his elbow. The tip of a knobby scab caught under his nub of a fingernail.

“Stop that,” clipped his mother. He obeyed. “If you keep this up, you’ll be covered with scars before you’re fourteen.”

He didn’t like the idea of taking so long.

STORY 3:

“Man, fuck that typewriter!”

Ulysses stood at the opposite end of the office, glaring at the antiquated machine. He grit his teeth ferociously, his hands pale, skinny talons rigidly extended from his sides, shrouded in strands of tattered correctional tape.

“Your father says you need to learn to appreciate such a device,” mouthed the clerk. “You need to appreciate where this business came from.”

“Shut up! I know what he said,” answered Ulysses. “That doesn’t change the fact that I hate this fucking thing.”

“I’m not certain your father would appreciate such a sentiment,” the clerk coyly replied.

“So…?” His rhetorical question remained unanswered. Ulysses’ eyes darted across the room, and he puffed, exasperated at his assignment. “Nobody uses a typewriter anymore,” he opined as he fumbled with the latch on a file cabinet as tall as him. “I don’t see what difference it makes whether or not I know it or not.”

“You’re being redundant again, sir.”

“Agh! Don’t remind me!” stammered Ulysses.

The clerk remained nonplussed. “Your father requires you to be attentive to your grammar as well, Ulysses.”

After an infuriated sigh, Ulysses returned to his seat. “Goddamned typewriters, goddamned grammar…and where’s the fucking carbon paper? We’re supposed to toss the fucking photocopier out the fucking window?!” A hand darted across the desk and snatched out a hapless hole puncher that was too close.

“Oh, we would need to call the janitor for that one, I’m certain,” answered the clerk.

Ulysses veritably clawed at his hole puncher, bits of correctional tape flaking away as his arms flapped about like a spastic pair of frog’s legs. “Fuck! Fuck! Fucking fuck this thing!”

Ulysses blinked. “Where’s my bong?”

The clerk breathed a defeated sigh.

A man’s house burns down. The smoking wreckage represents only a ruined home that was dear through years of use and pleasant associations. By and by, as the days and weeks go on, first he misses this, then that, then the other thing. And when he casts about for it he finds that it was in that house. Always it is an essential - there was but one of its kind. It cannot be replaced. It was in that house. It is irrevocably lost. It will be years before the tale of lost essentials is complete, and not till then can he truly know the magnitude of his disaster.